


what a tinder box we live in

by goinghost



Series: location - blupjeans week 2018 [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: e067-069 Story and Song Parts 1-3, done for the blupjeans week prompt: aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 20:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14755958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goinghost/pseuds/goinghost
Summary: Weeks after the Day of Story and Song, things would still get...bad.--Barry panics a bit. Lup wakes him up. Things are nice, finally.





	what a tinder box we live in

**Author's Note:**

> so here is the first of my five fics i wrote for blupjeans week (i couldn't do all seven because i lost all inspiration but i tried and i almost made it!) i just love blupjeans man
> 
> cw for a brief panic attack-esque spiral that starts at "But Lup wasn’t always there when he woke up" and ends with that paragraph
> 
> the titles of all of my blupjeans week fics will be from the song 'location' by freelance whales aka a perfect blupjeans song

Weeks after the Day of Story and Song, things would still get...bad.

Lup refused to be in the dark for more than a few seconds, creating her own light source nine times out of ten; Barry could barely stand to let Lup out of his sight, lamenting about the fact that he couldn’t touch her often. It was suffocating at first, these struggles, Lup’s inability to be confined without a panic attack and Barry’s desire to stay by her side every minute of every day. It was something they had to work on. But they’d been together for over half a century, and they’d lived with the trauma of each other’s deaths more times than any other beings in all of reality; they could handle problems.

Still, it wasn’t exactly easy, per se. Lup didn’t need meditation and she couldn’t sleep anymore, in her lich form, but she’d wander while Barry got much needed rest. They hadn’t started working for the Raven Queen yet, and so he was getting as much sleep as he could before his body didn’t require it. Barry had spent a century barely managing a four hour nap every three days, sometimes running on fumes until he literally died of exhaustion all so that they could save the world again and again and sometimes so that they couldn’t. He deserved this.

But Lup wasn’t always there when he woke up, chest heaving and tears pricking at his eyes. In the dark of their bedroom, he was alone again. He was alone and Lucretia was painting him as some kind of evil entity and his closest friends didn’t trust him and his captain had lost any semblance of a personality and Lup was _gone_ and nothing he could do would bring her back because they’d found her corpse and she hadn’t found him as a lich yet which meant she must be gone because she wouldn’t leave she _wouldn’t_ and—  

He would pinch himself to keep from spiraling anymore, just lightly on his wrist, enough to reassure himself that his body wasn’t temporary anymore, he had no reason to keep dying and searching. He could remember. He wouldn’t forget. And he’d fish his glasses off of his nightstand and grab his stone of farspeech, dialing Lup’s frequency with all the urgency of his rapid-fire heartbeat. She always picked up, no matter where she was or what she was doing. She always picked up.

“Lup,” Barry would breathe out, voice thin and shaky.

“I’m right here,” she’d say with such a finality that even his scattered mind couldn’t deny it. “I’ll be back in a flash.”

“Don’t—Can you stay on the line?”

“‘Course, Bar. Want me to talk about anything in particular?”

“Uh—How was tonight? See anything cool?”

And she’d laugh and snort a bit as if he’d just reminded her of the funniest thing. She’d go on to tell him about the kid who’d wiped out on his scooter when he’d seen her coming, then practically fallen over himself getting up when she came over to check on him. She’d talk about the sheer amount of fires people started so late at night because they knew that Lup-yes- _that-_ Lup was wandering through and she didn’t fancy the dark much. She’d practically eulogize the loss of a pair of earrings that she’d hidden for when she’d needed money (or just to look, “more bangin’ than usual.”) on her travels chasing the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet.

It was nice. Normal. Safe. Lup was there and Barry could breathe and feel the blankets on his skin and _remember._

 

* * *

 

“Babe.”

“Hnnmph.”

A shake of his shoulders, “ _Ba-a-a-be.”_

More grunting.

“You have to get up, Bar. I promised Taako that I’d help with the kick-off feast. He’s got some big plans and none of them involve using magic to make it easier so he’ll need all the help he can get.”

“You should go,” Barry grumbled, reaching for his glasses and rubbing his face, “I’ll be up in a second.”

“As if I’m leaving my boy behind for even a minute.” Lup rubbed his shoulders and felt him melt under her hands. It felt good to have hands again. “Really been putting your old man body through the ringer, huh, babe?”

He chuckled, leaning into her touch, “You’re older than me.”

“Yeah, but I’m an elf. Comes with the territory. Just like how good I am at having sex with said old man body.”

They stayed silent for a little after that. Lup continued massaging the tension out of Barry’s sleep-addled shoulders, peppering kisses onto his neck in between breaths. It felt good to breathe again.

Barry broke the silence with a contented sigh, “This is nice.”

“Yeah?” She blew a raspberry on the side of his neck and he just laughed.

“Yeah. You, with your body back and sleeping with you next to me, doing stuff that’s not sleeping.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” Barry stretched. “But you’re right, I should get up.”

Lup waggled her eyebrows, “Or we could stay here for a while.”

“You were the one who said we needed to help Taako!” Barry laughed again. He’d forgotten how addictive Lup’s touch could be, forgotten that she felt the same way about him.  

“Well, I said _I_ needed to help Taako because we all know all you can do in the kitchen is stand there and look pretty for me, but things change. Sometimes you realize how much you wanna smooch Barold J. Bluejeans with your hot-off-the-presses new body.”

As hard as it was, Barry shrugged her off and got to his feet, searching the floor for his boxers. Lup was practically hanging off of him, “Babe, I’ve gotta take a shower.”

That caught her attention, “A shower, huh? Room for one more?” And she gave him this—look. A look that he’d never be able to describe because sometimes he still didn’t understand it. A look full of the love that had powered them for a century. And he couldn’t resist.

“Yeah,” he smiled and leaned down to give her a slow and sweet kiss, “I think there is.”


End file.
